- Mora (mythology)
Mora are mostly malevolent folkloric beings associated with sleep that in some form or another can be found throughout Europe.
In
Polish folklore , "mora" are the souls of living people that leave the body during the night, and are seen as wisps of straw or hair or as moths. In certainSlavic languages , variations of the word mora actually "mean"moth (for example, see Czech word "můra").In Serbian, "mora" refers to a "nightmare". "Mora" or "Mara" is one of the spirits from ancient Slav mythology. Mara was a dark spirit that takes a form of a beautiful woman and then visits men in their dreams, torturing them with desire, and dragging life out of them. Other Slavic names were "nocnica", night woman, or "ejjeljaro", night-goer .
In Germany they were known as "mara", "mahr", "mare", in Romania they were known as "
Moroi ". In Slavic countries the terms included "mora", "zmoras", "morava" and "moroi" ; in France, such a witch was the "cauchemar". Hungarian folkloristÉva Pócs traces the core term back to the Indo-European root "moros", death. ["Haunted Land", Piatkus, 2001, p 78]Characteristics
According to author and researcher
Paul Devereux , mora included witches who took on the form of animals when their spirits went out while they were in trance. Animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds and often bees and wasps. ["Haunted Land", Piatkus, 2001, p 78]Like other trance practitioners, mora witches traditionally owed their abilities to being born with a
caul . In their metamorphosed form they could fly through the night, walk on or hover above water and travel in a sieve. Dead mora witches were said to return as ghosts.ee also
*
Mairu References
Further reading
Paul Devereux, "Haunted Land: Investigations into Ancient Mysteries and Modern Day Phenomena", Piatkus Publishers, London, 2001
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
